So on it goes. People who face virtually no threat to jobs or to their standards of living or to their social benefits or to their taxes or anything decide it's time to GET TOUGH on undocumented workers.
Today in BBC Mundo, the following article appeared (my translation):
On Monday, the majority of the voters in the city of Fremont, Nebraska passed a referendum to prohibit the selling or renting of homes to undocumented workers.
Unofficial results from the Office of the Secretary of Dodge County revealed that the voters approved the measure with 57% of the vote.
Around 45% of eligible voters participated in the process.
Residents of the small city of 25,000 inhabitands have shown their fear that Latinos are seizing jobs and that undocumented workers are taking advantage of local resources.
Local officials who had previously refused to apply measures of this nature indicated that now that the city has spoken, they will do all they can to put the ordinance into effect.
"We are going to comply with the will of the city," declared Mayor Skip Edwards. "We only have to put it into practice and move ahead."
Permission to Rent
Ordinance 5165 obliges people who want to rent a home to ask permission of the city government. Permission will not be granted to those who can't show the correct US immigration documents.
The ordinance demands in addition that businesses verify the documenation of their workers in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data base known as E-Verify.
The requirement will not apply to meat processing plants which employ the majority of undocumented workers because they are located outside the jurisdiction of the city of Fremont.
With the passage of the ordinance, the little city becomes the third in the US to support measures of this sort. The cities of Farmers Branch, Texas and Hazelton, Pennsylvania approved ordinances which establish fines for people who rent living places or contract with undocumented migrants.
Legal Battles
But Fremont is the first city to pass a referendum to do this. Before the referendum, the authorities of the local municipality refused to pass the ordinance.
After a two-year battle, the groups opposed to immigration of undocumented workers succeeded in obtaining enough signatures to put the matter to a popular vote.
The Farmers Branch Ordinance as well as the Hazelton ordinance face legal processes, and other similar efforts have been stopped by the Federal courts.
It is expected that the same efforts will be made against the Nebraskan city's ordinance.
Latin Presence
Fremont has experienced a sharp growth in its Hispanic population in the last two decades in great part owing to the offer of jobs in the two meat processing plants in the area, Fremont Beef and Hormel Meatpacking.
Even so, the Hispanic community represents less than ten percent of the population. From some 165 Latinos who lived in Fremont in 1990, its calculated that presently some 2,060 live in the urban center.
The city enjoys, furthermore, a low rate of unemployment, at 4.9%.
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So if this were just an isolated phenomenon (sounds like it, with three small cities the only ones cited), you might just roll your eyes. Unfortunately, as we know, it's not. In my short visit to the Bay Area, I encountered the following among relatives and friends whom I thought would know better:
A guy at a family gathering, perhaps a little bit into the liquor, gets everyone guffawing by talking about the dirty, drug-dealing no-good, stupid Mexicans. When another relative who really should have known better complained about unruly US kids, I said where we live, they are really better behaved in public settings. THEN he said, probably because they're all beaten up by their parents.
What to say?